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Dr. Larry Gentilello has one remaining lawsuit pending against UT Southwestern, his former employer. A key hearing is set for Sept. 12 in that case.

Dr. Larry Gentilello may never get the chance for a jury to hear his complaints against UT Southwestern Medical Center and Parkland Memorial, its teaching hospital. That doesn’t mean he considers his legal efforts a failure.

As I reported in today’s print edition, a federal judge in Dallas has dismissed the trauma surgeon’s federal retaliation claim against UTSW. Judge Ed Kinkeade did so based on certain legal shields state agencies like UTSW enjoy under the law. Kinkeade did not weigh into the facts of the allegations themselves in his ruling, which I uploaded at the end of this post.

Gentilello had alleged that UTSW demoted him as head of its surgical burn, trauma and critical care unit in 2007 after he reported that faculty physicians weren’t properly supervising resident doctors at Parkland, leading to patient harm and fraudulent medical billings. He sought back pay under the retaliation claim.

Given Gentilello’s legal obstacles, an appeal of the judge’s ruling is unlikely, his lawyer told me. I also asked Gentilello for his thoughts.

“Taking on UT Southwestern in this,” he said, “is a David versus Goliath type of task. They simply make the claim to the courts that as an arm of the state, they are immune from lawsuits by citizens.”

As Kern Wildenthal faces potential repayment of personal expenses, he is named to a newly created director's post at a company owned by major UTSW donor Harold Simmons.

UPDATED: 1:27 p.m. and 2:53 p.m.

UT Southwestern Medical Center will pay up to $140,000 to calculate how much its former president, Dr. Kern Wildenthal, owes the medical center for spending public dollars on personal travel, a university spokesman says.

Meanwhile, Wildenthal was named late last week as a director at a company owned by major UTSW donor Harold Simmons. He will receive up to $52,000 for a year’s work, plus more than $16,000 in the company’s stock.

Audit firm Grant Thornton LLP has already started reviewing Wildenthal’s travel expenses, UTSW spokesman Tim Doke said. The effort, conducted by the firm’s Dallas office, is estimated to take about five weeks.

An initial, outside review of Wildenthal’s expenses has cost $500,000. That one, commissioned by UT System headquarters in Austin, was triggered by a Dallas Morning News investigation and broadly tracked TheNews’ findings. TheNews identified $720,000 in UTSW-funded expenses, mostly between 2005 and 2010, that were poorly documented, had no tangible benefit to UTSW, or closely tracked Wildenthal’s personal interests in foreign travel, wine and opera.